Some are devoured by fierce dreadful
dogs with iron teeth, others by gloating crows with iron beaks and
all made as it were of iron; (EBC)

Some are devoured by fierce horrid dogs
with iron teeth., others by the gloating Iron-beaks as if by crows of
iron. (EHJ)

EHJ noted:

For the ayas-tuṇḍas,
Abhidharma-kośa, II, 151; it is wrong to take vāyasaiḥ with
ayas-tuṇḍaiḥ.

There is no denial, ostensibly or below
the surface, of the existence in saṁsāra of hell. What Aśvaghoṣa as I hear him is negating,
below the surface, is fear of passing through hell.

The doings that lead to rebirth one
veiled in ignorance, in the three ways, / Does do; and by these
actions he enters a sphere of existence. //MMK26.1 // Consciousness
seeps, with doings as causal grounds, into the sphere of existence./
And so, consciousness having seeped in, pychophysicality is infused.
//26.2// There again, once psychophysicality is infused, there
is the coming into existence of the six senses; / The six senses
having arrived, contact arises; //26.3// And when the faculty of
sight, going back, has met a physical form, and met indeed a meeting
together, / – When sight has gone back, in this way, to
psychophysicality – then consciousness arises. //26.4// The
combination of the three – physical form, consciousness and faculty
of seeing – / Is contact; and from that contact arises feeling.
//26.5// On the grounds of feeling, there is thirst – because one
thirsts for the object of feeling. / While the thirsting is
going on, grasping hold takes hold in four ways.//26.6// While there
is grasping hold, the becoming originates of the one who grasps
– / Because becoming, in the absence of grasping hold, would be set
free and would not become becoming. //26.7// The five aggregates,
again, are the becoming. Out of the becoming rebirth is born. /
The suffering of ageing and death, and all the rest of it –
sorrows, along with lamentations; //26.8// Dejectedness, troubles –
all this arises out of rebirth. / In this way there is the coming
about of this whole mass of suffering. //26.9// The doings which
are the root of saṁsāra thus does the ignorant one do. / The
ignorant one therefore is the doer; the wise one is not, because of
reality making itself known. //26.10// In the destruction of
ignorance, there is the non-coming-into-being of doings./ The
destruction of ignorance, however, is because of the
bringing-into-being of just this act of knowing.//26.11// By the
destruction of this one and that one, this one and that one are
discontinued. / This whole edifice of suffering is thus well and
truly demolished.//MMK26.12//

We are working towards a situation in which the doings which are the root of saṁsāra are not done.
Doings are not done, Nāgārjuna says, because of cultivation of just
that act of knowing. And the act of knowing in question seems to mean
knowing that the right thing does itself, or the truth emerges by
itself, or reality makes itself known.
If the cultivation of just this act of
knowing requires us to go to hell and be fed upon by fierce dogs and
metal-beaked demons, then so be it.

In fact what Aśvaghoṣa as I hear him
is suggesting is stronger than “so be it.” What he seems to be
suggesting is that the teeth and beaks of these beings in hell are
made of the fire-coloured metal described in BC14.12, that is, gold.

The suggestion might be, then, that a
bodhisattva's sufferings in the harsh reality of saṁsāra, acutely
painful though they are, insofar as they are the sufferings of a
bodhisattva, are the most valuable thing there is.

From where my teacher sat, I must sometimes have seemed like a very keen hound, and at the same time like a very needy
scavenger, occasionally given in his ignorance to crowing.